This post may be a no-brainer for some people in this class, but I think one of the main fears I have about teaching thoroughly new genres in new mediums is that I'm not sure if I can assess them fairly and competently. I'm not as concerned about the "teaching new media what-not will take away from writing time," as Chapman discusses, because I think that any syllabus should be aware of this potential. As I find myself incorporating more new media writing into my courses, I constantly check to make sure I'm providing a level of direct writing instruction and practice in the classroom.

Apparently I jumped into the pedagogical waters a bit to quickly with my post for last week ( Kalmbach and teching with tech) because a few of the articles for this week talked specifically about computers, programs, technology and the practice of teaching writing. What I found especially interesting was the following statement: “Above all, we try to keep writing, not technology, the center of the course, even when we are introducing word processing to the students” (Dinan, Gagnon, and Taylor 34).

As I was going through the readings for this week I was really struck by a comment James Kalmback made in his piece “From Liquid Paper to Typewriters: Some Historical Perspectives on Technology in the Classroom,” specifically: